★★★★★
Step out of the theatre and you can see them on the pavements: laughing, talking and kissing; falling in love and running out of money. Animated and individuated by Puccini in 1896, Henri Murger’s composite characters from the Quartier Latin of 1840s Paris have never grown old. In Àlex Ollé’s production of La bohème, brought to the Edinburgh Festival by Teatro Regio Torino and the conductor Gianandrea Noseda, only the period and the location have changed.
Mimi, Rodolfo, Musetta, Marcello, Colline and Schaunard live in a modern development on the fringe of a European city. It’s an area where African street traders are harassed by the police; where street-walkers, construction workers, hen parties and medics smoke in the lemon-yellow light of an all-night